Inspector Ji let out a long sigh of relief. He hung up, then smiled and said to me, “Did you hear that? The button wasn’t pulled off! It was cut off! In short, someone saw the victim quarrel with Mr. Chen, then cut a button from Mr. Chen’s jacket and secretly planted it near the body. Do you know what this is? This is false evidence! Someone has framed Mr. Chen! This is making Mr. Chen a scapegoat!”

I asked nervously, “So…do you know who the real murderer is?”

“Of course!”

All color drained from my face as I feared that Inspector Ji possessed the ability to solve cases by his intuition and quickly asked who it was.

But the first thing he said turned out to be completely different from what I expected. “I think, the murderer is…the victim himself!”

“Wha-?”

“That’s right! The victim killed himself! He killed himself and framed someone else for it!”

I blinked in surprise, then said anxiously, “But how can that be? Didn’t you say earlier that if he had committed suicide, his body should have landed on the platform on the second story? You were the one who said that he must have been pushed by someone else because his body had flown beyond the length of the platform and landed on the ground!”

Well, that’s what he said THEN. Inspector Ji decided to throw out all the conjectures he had made earlier and start all over again. He turned around and asked me, “There are seven or eight condemned desks in this corner. Why do you think I insisted on leaning against this particular one to rest?”

I could tell that he was trying to insinuate something else and I began to feel uneasy. “Why?”

“Because all the other desks were covered in a huge layer of dust, but this one looked like it had been wiped very recently. This desk is very, very clean!”

I could see where he was going with this and I broke out into a cold sweat.

As I had expected, he continued to talk about the desk, “I’ve been wondering all this while, who could have wiped this desk? Why did he only wipe this one and not the rest? Was there a secret on the surface of the desk that he had to wipe away?”

He paused to look intently at me and finally uttered the words I feared hearing the most, “It’s the footprints!”

“That’s right! The thing that was wiped off the desk must have been footprints! Only footprints can explain everything that’s happened so far!”

“What…what do you mean by that?”

“You still don’t get it? Someone wiped off the footprints on the desk and put the desk back where it came from. He did all this in order to hide the fact that the victim had used this desk as a runway before leaping out of that window to kill himself!”

These words made my heart beat so fast, it nearly came right out of my mouth. As I tried to think about what to do in my panic, he suddenly asked me, “Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Me? What am I supposed to say?”

I had hoped that feigning ignorance would help, but Inspector Ji saw through it right away. “You’re the one who wiped the table and put it back where it belonged, right?”

I was terribly frightened and thought that since he had seen through everything, there was no point in hiding. I decided to stop thinking of a way out and admit to my crime.

But Inspector Ji suddenly held his hand up to interrupt me. “I gave you a chance to come clean with me just now but you feigned ignorance. And now, you want to confess? I’m sorry, but you’ve lost your chance. I will do the talking from here onwards.”

He paused to take a deep breath, then pointed a finger at me the way Detective Conan would and said, “Actually, you’re the mastermind behind this whole thing!”

I was really astonished. I didn’t expect him to get this far and I suddenly didn’t know what to do.

When he saw that I didn’t react, he quickly put it in another way, “Of course, the victim could have been the mastermind as well, but that’s not important. The important part is that this whole thing was planned by the both of you. One of you was going to commit suicide and the other one was going to plant false evidence to make someone else the scapegoat!”

After he finished saying that, he grinned and looked at me. “Do you know when I started suspecting you?”

That was what I wanted to know the most, so I asked, “When?”

Inspector Ji broke it down for me, “After you ran towards the body and my subordinates pinned you down, you signaled to me with your eyes to check the body and its surroundings, and we eventually did come across that button. When that happened, I already started wondering how you knew there would definitely be something in the nearby area. It seemed as though you already knew something beforehand!”

I had to admit that I had been too rash earlier. If those onlookers hadn’t agitated me by pointing fingers at Daning’s body, I would have been more rational and I wouldn’t have made it so obvious!

Inspector Ji felt bad when he saw the pained expression on my face and started to counsel me instead, “I know you didn’t want this to happen. But if that was the case, why didn’t you stop your friend from committing suicide? And you even helped him to frame a teacher!”

“Daning didn’t kill himself,” I said. “It was Mr. Chen who pushed him into a corner.”

Inspector Ji asked, “Why do you say that?”

I explained, “This was his last chance to retake his university exams but Mr. Chen not only took away his exam script, but also barred Daning from taking the exam. This poor boy from a farming village worked so hard to finally get to a university but he wasn’t going to graduate because of what this teacher did! Isn’t that as good as killing him?”

Inspector Ji sighed. “But this happened because he wasn’t serious about his studies, so this was just a consequence of that.”

I said, “But Daning already regretted his lack of seriousness and was so happy to be able to retake his exams. As the saying goes, a wastrel who changes his ways is more valuable than gold. As a teacher, why did he make things worse for Daning instead of helping him?”

Inspector Ji said gravely, “While that might be true, it’s not entirely Mr. Chen’s fault either. He was just doing his job as an invigilator. The problem still comes back to the student. If he had revised his work properly, he wouldn’t have had to resort to cheating and get caught for it.”

I scoffed. “The school never arranged for remedial classes…”

He cut me off, “That’s not an excuse. Even if the school didn’t arrange for remedial classes, he could have revised on his own!”

I quickly retorted, “There was no time for that!”

He looked at me curiously. “Why not?”

I sneered, “After the school notified us that we could retake our exams, Daning spent the last ten odd days trying to earn enough to pay for the expensive remedial classes. After he had finally saved up enough and paid the school, he was forced to go for the exams without attending a single remedial class. Isn’t that as good as forcing him into cheating?!”

After I finished saying that, I glanced at Inspector Ji, then turned to look out of the window. The reddish evening sun in the distance was slowly setting, disappearing bit by bit between the school buildings.

Daning and I had spent four years gaming through the night. When the sun began to rise, we would drag our tired bodies out of the internet café and back to our dormitory. During that time, the morning sun would rise little by little from behind us, the bright rays casting a long shadow on the ground. There were many times when I couldn’t resist turning back to look at the sun rising, but I would end up having to shut my eyes again because the sunlight was too glaring.

Over the past four years in university, I had seen too many sunrises but I had never seen a sunset.

I finally managed to catch one, and the sun rays of the setting sun were surprisingly gentle.

It was too bad that Daning was no longer able to watch the sunset with me!

I finally said to Inspector Ji, “You know, humans can deal with despair. But it’s really hard when you are given a small ray of hope, only for it to be taken away so soon. That’s why Daning chose to kill himself!”

As I said those words, I slowly climbed onto the windowsill.